While Congress' new draft law awaited the President's signature, thousands of young men had stormed the nation's armories. To them, a three-year hitch in the National Guard or Organized Reserves (with regular drill periods near home) looked much better than a 21-month hitch as a draftee. By the time the President signed the law, the reserves were chockablock with new recruits, and the Guard was almost over its national goal of 341,000 enlistments for 1948-49.
Then the escape hatch closed. In a droning Pentagon press conference last week, Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall announced that registration for the draft would...
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